Power Bassin' the Wench Way
ARTIFICIAL FLIES AND LURES ONLY. NO BOATING.Signs like these only appear on....
A.) Tiny ponds
B.) Irrigation Cesspools
C.) Conventional Bass Lakes
If you guessed A or B, you would be correct. No person in their right mind fishes for big bass on the town pond that is slightly smaller than a bathtub and comes complete with an ag chemical cocktail that WILL cause mysterious rashes in uncomfortable places. Some of these ponds are actually radioactive. (Note: Glow in the dark lures are a very good option.) Fortunately for you, I'm not in my right mind, and I regularly pull 3 pounders out of these waters every summer in Colorado. There ARE big bass in these ponds, and you CAN catch them quite easily. How?
Crankbaits. Big, flashy, crankbaits. My favorite model for fishing rock-bottom sludge ponds in the Longmont area is the Bill Dance Fat Free Fry (say it with me...) It dives to 4-6 feet and wallops big bass in these ponds. My favorite colors are citrus shad for murky or radioactive waters, as these imitate bluegills or glowing shad. In clear waters on cloudy days, I use baby bass. On clear days in clear waters, nothing can beat a Bomber 6A in a crawfish shade. For this kind of work, I prefer a 6'6" Rapala sxi rod paired with a Pfleuger president reel. 8 pound test lets that lure wiggle seductively, without sacrificing too much strength. However, I have landed a 7 pound, 22 inch bass out of a pond the size of my dining room with a 5 foot ultralight model with some ghetto-tastic reel and 4 pound line. That's the same get-up I use when I go after 24 pound carp. But most of the time I use the heavier setup, simply because it makes my life easier.
I have not had a lot of success in Colorado with spinnerbaits. I was recently in Massachussets, however, and bass will go head over heels, so to speak, to smash one. For the most part, bass fishing is like picking a bar fight. You don't want to gently entice it to nibble on your morsel that you have gently presented. That's trout fishing, and trout fishing is not what we do in the middle of August. You want to piss that fish off, and you want to do it with something half its size. It doesn't want to EAT your bait, it wants to KILL your bait. Two different things.
I will try to keep my segment on swimbaits 20 words or less. Storm Suspending Wildeye Swimshad, 6 inches. Slow, steady, straight retrieve. Clear water. weedbeds. Boom! Pow! Flip!Flip!Flip! Land! Release! ~this has been an explanation of swimbait fishing in clear water with visible bass, on a lake with plenty of smaller bass to pick on.~
Anyhooo, that is my article today. Remember: catch and release, and give the tiny ponds a chance. oh, and tip your wench.
posted by KitchenWench @ 5:03 PM
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